Alabama a Force in the Women's Hammer Throw
5/14/2015 12:00:00 AM | Track & Field, Cross Country
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- As the Crimson Tide enters post-season competition, senior Nia Barnes and junior Danielle McConnell hold top rankings in the SEC for the women's hammer throw.
Barnes, a native of West Orange, N.J., stepped foot on campus after a successful high school career throwing the javelin. In her freshman year, Barnes began training for the hammer throw under the tutelage of Alabama throws coach Doug Reynolds.
"Hammer was something new for me, and I was excited to learn it," Barnes said. "Coach Reynolds did a great job and spaced our training out so that we could have decent throws our first few meets outdoors that year. It was different because javelin is totally different than the hammer. I adapted to both events separately very well that first year, so training for both worked out for me pretty well in the beginning."
Barnes sat out the indoor season during a freshman year choosing to train for outdoor competition instead. In her first outdoor season with the Tide in 2012, Barnes garnered a fourth-place finish in the javelin and an 11th-place finish in the hammer competition at the SEC Outdoor Championships.
She added another event to her repertoire in 2013 when she began throwing the weight during the indoor season. By 2014, Barnes scored her first conference championship point in the event, finishing eighth at that years SEC Indoor Championships.
In 2014 and her third outdoor season throwing the hammer, Barnes finished third in the SEC meet's hammer throw competition and earned a berth in the NCAA Outdoor Championships by throwing a personal record 203-9 at the NCAA East Preliminary. Barnes, then a junior, finished 20th at the NCAA meet, earning honorable mention All-America honors for her performance.
During the 2015 season, Barnes finished fifth in the SEC Indoor Championships weight throw competition. She has also claimed two spots on the Alabama all-time performance list in the hammer throw, adding to the four she obtained during the 2014 outdoor season. Barnes also made the transition to training only for the hammer and the weight.
"Although javelin is my first love -- I love javelin more than hammer -- I'm better at the hammer than the javelin," Barnes said. "Transitioning to only hammer and weight was a little weird because I did javelin training my freshman year and still did better in the hammer. Then my second year I did javelin training and still did better in the hammer, so [Reynolds] pushed me over to hammer. My third year here hammer just started developing a lot faster and javelin was stagnant. So, I miss it a lot but I'm happy I'm doing something that I can compete in at this high level."
Barnes is joined by Tide newcomer McConnell, a native of Hobart, Tasmania. McConnell, who previously trained at the Tasmanian Institute of Sport, joined the Alabama team as a junior and competed in her first meet wearing crimson and white on May 2 at the LSU Invitational in Baton Rouge, La.
"It's great being able to train with Dani McConnell," Barnes said. "We each want to do really well but we want each other to do really well, too. I want to beat her and she wants to beat me but we both encourage each other. In training, we have different training levels. She's a little more consistent than I am because she's thrown longer than me, but in competition time we definitely push each other. We're usually both towards the top at meets and that's good because it's good competition. At the end of the day we're both going to be happy for each other."
In her first meet with the Tide, McConnell threw 199-1, the fourth-best throw on the Tide's all-time performance list. McConnell's toss of 199-1 landed her with the fifth-best mark in the SEC in 2015, just behind Barnes who sits in fourth with a season-best mark of 200-7. With these marks going into the SEC meet, the duo has a chance to score a large number of points for Alabama's team total.
"I'm excited about SECs," Barnes said. "It's my last conference meet and I want to go out with a bang. I just want to compete hard and leave everything in the circle so I can finalize my legacy here as an athlete. I want to make a statement not only for Alabama but definitely in the throws. Dani McConnell and I are ranked fourth and fifth right now, so we can definitely score some big points and shock the nation with our throws."
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